Commercially available image viewing systems in the medical field utilize various techniques to present visual representations of image data to a user. Specifically, image data produced within modalities such as Computed Tomography (CT) and the like is displayed on a display terminal for review by a medical practitioner at a medical treatment site. Typically, the image data produced by the modalities is in a form of a series of planar images that are aligned along an axis that is normal to the plane of each image.
By viewing the various planar images that make up the image series, a medical practitioner can better determine the presence or absence of a medical condition (e.g. disease, tissue damage etc.). Many attempts to optimize the display and presentation of the planar image data for viewing by a medical practitioner have been made. Currently, when a medical professional wishes to review an image series that covers an area of interest, he or she must either view each image individually, or choose to skip certain images. This process can be both inefficient and prone to error. It is possible that skipping certain images in a non-systematic manner may cause the medical professional to overlook the presence of a medical condition that is reflected in one of the skipped images. For reasons such as these, it is often very difficult and time consuming for medical practitioners to review large amounts of image data.